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Ok. No offense to Stony Brook University, but if you ask any college sports fan to name a sport that Stony Brook has excelled in, made a championship for, or is even just known for, they probably won’t be able to name a thing. Until now…

Stony Brook’s NCAA Division I Baseball program has just earned a spot in the 2012 College World Series and what a Cinderella story it is. Stony Brook, a member of the always overlooked America East Conference, becomes just the 1st team from New York to make it to the College World Series since 1980 and doing so after only 12 years as a Division I program. Plus, they took down two powerhouses in the last 2 weeks, Miami and LSU, in their home stadiums.

I was immediately drawn to Stony Brook from the moment I saw their 13-inning game that lasted Friday afternoon through Saturday morning. While they didn’t win that game, it was a best of 3 series, and they won the 2 that counted. Last night they beat six-time national champion LSU 7-2. They made it look easy.

Stony Brook is led by head coach, Matt Senk, who has been there since 1991. He has taken the program from a Division III baseball program to a team who just made the College World Series. Stony Brook has stars too. They are led by Travis Jankowski, Maxx Tissenbaum, and freshman, Kevin Krause. In fact, one of their star players, Jankowski, was just selected in the Major League Baseball draft with a few other teammates as well.

Stony Brook now has the daunting task of trying to be just the 2nd #4 seed to win the College World Series. If there is any team up to the task right now, I would say it is Stony Brook Baseball. They even earned the respect of the over 10,000 LSU fans who showed up to watch their heavily favored LSU Tigers. After the game, the fans stayed around to cheer on Stony Brook and even give the team high fives and hand shakes. Making it to the College Baseball World Series is just another example of how far Stony Brook has come.

So if you’re looking for a good sports story right now, look no further then Stony Brook Baseball from Long Island, NY. For many of my readers, that’s right in your backyard. Stony Brook Baseball is shocking the College Baseball World as we speak and hopefully this is just the beginning of their Cinderella story.